My name is Jason Alley, and I am a Biology Student at Biola
University. I have not graduated yet, but I'm almost done.
Understanding this, and knowing that I am not in the same intellectual
bracket, I have a few thoughts. Tell me what you think.
First, truth is truth. It is absolute. What exists, exists, and what
happened, happened. Truth is altogether seperate from our
interpretation or understanding of it. Based on this, I do not believe
that there can be a conflict between two "truths." If God exists, and if
the Bible is true, than we, as well as the rest of creation, were
created uniquely and seperately. If God does not exist, and if the
Bible is in error, then we arose from one common ancestor, all of life
working its way from ooze to us. Either one or the other is true, and
despite how forcefully we fight for how we interprete the evidence, we
cannot change what is true. Even if everyone in the world believed that
we evolved, wholy apart from supernatural influence, and it isn't true,
that doesn't make it true.
I hope I haven't lost anyone. I don't think I should have.
"So What?" you might ask. Well, the consequences of the debate, then
are not what is true and what is not; they are who is right and who is
not. You see, Evolution and Creationism are both Paradigms. We (an
evolutionist and I) can look at the identical evidence and draw
idfferent conclusions, because we have different deffinitions of "how it
is." Evolution and Creationism are both non-scientific, philosophical,
and (yes, I dare say it) religious.
"Science," as it is defined in my old and torn-up biology text from
High School, is "the method by which we arrive at conclusions by means
of observation and experimentation."
Neither Evolution or Creation are observable, since neither happen
today. Even if people say that evolution is on-going, it would be far
too long a process to adequately observe. Both schools of thought, both
religious paradigms, call on the implimentation of faith. Evolutionists
rest their faith in the natural world, mutation, adaptation, and the
gradual betterment of an organism and eventual speciation. The
creationsit lays his faith in the hands of a supernatural designer and
fabricator of all that is. Neither can be tested. Neither can be
observed. Both are outside of science, and both are, in essence,
religions.
So let's not divide the camp into the "religious" and the
"scientific." Both camps are religious, and both, in varying degrees,
are scientific. The division, now, lies between those who employ the
evolutionary paradigm and those who rely on a supernatural creation.